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Relative Status of Journal and Conference Publications in Computer Science

Fri, 10/29/2010 - 11:02 — lorcan

Publication Type:

Journal Article

Authors:

Jill Freyne; Lorcan Coyle; Barry Smyth; Pádraig Cunningham

Source:

Communications of the ACM, Volume 53, Issue 11, p.124-132 (2010)

Keywords:

citation analysis; google scholar; impact factor; GS IF; ISI; computer science

Abstract:

Citations represent a trustworthy measure of CS research quality—whether in articles in conference proceedings or in CS journals. The traditional CS emphasis on publishing in conference proceedings could hurt CS researchers in evaluations based on the ISI Web of Knowledge. leading conference proceedings compare favourably to mid-ranking journals, surpassing journals in the bottom half of the traditional ISI Web of Knowledge impact ranking. The commonly held view that conference rejection rates are a good proxy for conference quality did not hold up to scrutiny in this study.

A Quantitative Evaluation of the Relative Status of Journal and Conference Publications in Computer Science

Tue, 10/07/2008 - 10:44 — lorcan

Publication Type:

Report

Authors:

Lorcan Coyle; Jill Freyne; Barry Smyth; Pádraig Cunningham

Source:

UCD-CSI-2008-08, University College Dublin, Dublin (2008)

Keywords:

citation analysis; google scholar; impact factor; GS IF; ISI; computer science

Abstract:

While it is universally held by computer scientists that conference publications have a higher status in computer science than in other disciplines there is little quantitative evidence in support of this position. The importance of journal publications in academic promotion makes this a big issue since a focus on journal papers only will miss many significant papers published at conferences in computer science. In this paper we set out to quantify the relative importance of journal and conference papers in computer science. We show that computer science papers in leading conferences match the impact of papers in mid-ranking journals and surpass the impact of papers in journals in the bottom half of the ISI rankings - when impact is measured by citations in Google Scholar. We also show that there is a poor correlation between this measure of impact and conference acceptance rates. This indicates that conference publication is an inefficient market where venues that are equally challenging in terms of rejection rates offer quite different returns in terms of citations.

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